VHS
by bythesea
Summary: A wealthy widow hires a private detective to investigate a videotape found in her late husband's possession.
1. Chapter 1

Both sides of the straight avenue were lined with wintry trees, their tangle of bare branches like gray writing on gray paper. This was so extensive an estate there was no need for a landscape designer to devise some picturesque approach to the mansion. A long straight drive through the grounds was the simplest, most direct way to impress. And Tom Wills was impressed. It was difficult to grow up in that part of the state and not be impressed by the figure of John Carstairs. When Tom was in high school almost all his friends had a relative who worked for one of Mr. Carstairs' companies. He may not have had global reach but in the vicinity of Charlesburg he was a dominating industrial magnate. The newspaper headline announcing his death had called him a 'czar'. Tom caught sight of the ivy-covered house, a deep green in the colorless landscape, architecturally distinguished by its four tall chimney stacks like medieval turrets.

Tom felt a little uncomfortable in his best suit. He didn't wear it often. He was happier in a sweatshirt and track pants raking the leaves on the lawn. But his unease came from more than unfamiliar clothes, he would readily admit. He had an ambivalent attitude towards serving the rich and powerful. Amy's father had always talked of him getting a big break, a foot in the door, he called it. Perhaps the Senator Michaels case was that break. Usually he didn't feel that he needed a break. Work was coming in steadily, maybe not highly paid work but Charlesburg was not a town of millionaires. Now that he had an opportunity though, he felt the excitement, the desire to make a good impression, to come out of this with a bankable reputation.

The butler opened the door for Tom but did not have to lead him further. A man, presumably Daniel Longley, who had phoned him for the appointment, was waiting in the vestibule.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Wills. I'm sorry to call you in on a Sunday but I thought the sooner the better."

"That's quite all right. Private investigators don't work nine-to-five hours."

"Quite right. I'm Daniel Longley, Mr. Carstairs' personal lawyer." He shook Tom's hand and led him into the study. This was a Hollywood set designer's idea of a rich old man's house: dark, polished wood paneling, massive brown leather furniture, and the largest Oriental carpet Tom had ever seen. Here, waiting for him seated on a wheelchair was his real client, Mrs. Carstairs, the widow. She was a thin, stately woman with curling white hair.

"You come highly recommended to me, Mr. Wills." Her voice was firm and deep in register. "You've done some work for my friend, Senator Michaels."

"I've been fortunate to work for people I've admired." It was in fact, a typically ugly case of marital infidelity but it wasn't a lie to say he admired the Senator.

"You can be counted on for your high level of discretion." Tom nodded at the compliment. Mrs. Carstairs wheeled her chair behind her late husband's desk. She drew his attention to a safe recessed in the wall. "Only my husband knew the combination to this safe. After his recent death we had to call in a man to have it opened." For the first time her face showed signs of strain.

"Why don't you tell me what you found inside?"

"Most of it was no surprise. Old stock certificates, mostly. But there was this." Her head motioned to an unmarked VHS videocassette lying on the desk. "We watched it, naturally." Mrs. Carstairs' entire body seemed to sag, as if the resolution to maintain appearances had gone from her. "Or I should say, Mr. Longley watched it. I began but had to turn away. It shows a young girl apparently being beaten, tortured and sexually assaulted. Three men are involved in perpetrating these horrors. I will tell you that I find the video very realistic." Mrs. Carstairs' voice faltered for a moment. "I'm asking for your help, Mr. Wills. I want your expert advice. Please tell me that this thing isn't authentic."

Tom put on a calm, professional demeanor. He tried to be reassuring. "I expect that it's some sort of sleazy pornography. There are people who would cater to certain tastes by marketing their material as authentic. You have to think though, why commit crimes when it's easy enough to hire actors?"

"Exactly as I was saying, Mrs. Carstairs," Longley interjected. "Hollywood effects can fake anything."

The lights were dimmed and a television set and a VCR were rolled in on a stand.

"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Wills. My doctor tells me I mustn't upset myself further." A maid pushed Mrs. Carstairs from the room.

The video came on. There were no production credits. An image abruptly appeared. It was a white-painted room. Light came from ceiling fluorescent fixtures. Tom's first thought was to snicker at Longley's comment about Hollywood special effects. This was the furthest thing from a Hollywood production. It had the appearance, not of a film production but of a video recording of an actual event. Whether by design or not, it looked authentic. At first the camera seemed to be mounted on a tripod and was fixed. There was no recorded sound.

The girl looked like she might barely be in her teens. She had very long, straight dark hair. The hair fell over much of her face, as if disarrayed by a struggle. Her expression was sullen, maybe defiant. Tom thought, she understands what's going to happen. She was wearing a plain white, wide-sleeved gown, possibly a hospital gown. Then was this room in a hospital? Her wrists were strapped down to the armrests of her chair. Two men came into the picture. Tom half expected them to be wearing sadomasochism outfits but instead they were dressed casually in jeans and t-shirts. Both had ski masks on to hide their faces. The girl, though, didn't seem to look at them closely as if she was trying to guess who they were. Maybe, Tom thought, the masks were for the camera and the girl knew their identities. One of the men rolled a metal trolley closer to the girl. On the top surface were knives and other tools. He picked up a long knife and held it up for the girl to see, then dragged the point over her face and her throat. At this point someone – it had to be a third man – picked the camera off the tripod and brought it up close to catch the girl's expression. Tom could see the tension in the girl's throat as the knife point played over her skin. Suddenly, the girl's face was struck. Tom grunted in reaction. Another blow and drops of blood spattered on the white wall behind.

The camera hovered over the victim. Tom stared at her thin white arms twitching in their restraints. Tears streamed down the girl's cheeks so that they glistened. Tom wondered if these men could really have intended the video as entertainment. Perhaps the recording was for themselves. He knew that serial killers liked to keep a trophy of their victim's so they would relive the excitement of the killing later. The video might have been part of the process of possessing the victim, of having absolute power over her. This was also a trophy they could share with the world, or at least they could fantasize about showing it to the rest of the world, achieving anonymous notoriety. If Tom thought he could keep his reactions under control by concentrating on analytical thoughts, he was wrong. All he could think of was how slender and fragile the girl looked. Her skin was pallid, as if she hadn't been in the sun for a long time. When she breathed deeply the oblique line where her ribcage ended showed clearly.

He hadn't imagined he would be affected so strongly. Tom would have admitted that he couldn't tolerate much pain himself and now he knew how low his threshold was for watching it inflicted on others. He wanted to cover his eyes but he imagined that Longley was watching him in the dark. It was like being drunk and losing control of your body. Tom felt the room beginning to spin around him. He was seized by a sense of panic. He was afraid he would be exposed as a cowering weakling, without the stomach for violence. Any chance of being a success as a private investigator would be destroyed once word got around. He clutched the arms of the chair as hard as he could. His hands seemed white to him in the dim light. He was breathing heavily. His heart was racing. It was as if something had seized hold of his insides and wouldn't let go. He tried to breathe deeply and regularly but every act he saw on the screen made his breath come in gasps. He could hear the girl's soundless screams boring into his ears.

The video ended. Just before the end there was a final close-up of the girl's face. Her black hair had fallen over her face. Only one eye appeared between strands of hair. The eye was staring fixedly back at the camera. Was it horror or fear that Tom saw there? No, he thought, it was sheer hate.

The lights were turned on. Longley went to the adjoining room to bring back Mrs. Carstairs. Tom was thankful for the moment to master himself. He took a deep breath and ran his hand over his forehead and through his thinning hair. He spoke in a normal, authoritative tone of voice. "I don't suppose I can convince you to take this to the police?"

"That is the one thing that is out of the question, Mr. Wills," said Mrs. Carstairs. "I have been with my husband for forty-five years. I've had four children and seven grandchildren with him. All that time he was loyal to me. I intend to stay loyal to him." As she said this, she began to tremble. She gave in to sobs that shook her body. She pulled out a white lace handkerchief and covered her face. When she had recovered a bit she said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Wills. I was thinking of my husband's last days."

Tom reflected that aside from building successful businesses and employing thousands, her late husband was admired as a benefactor of the community. The children's wing of the general hospital was named in his honor in appreciation of his generous donations. "I quite understand how you feel, Mrs. Carstairs."

"You can name your fee," said Longley. "Take any expenses you think necessary. We would like you to keep us informed of your progress."

"Naturally. I'll be reporting directly to you, Mrs. Carstairs, not to any intermediaries. No offense intended."

"None taken." Mr. Longley was pacing the room. "You won an academic scholarship to attend university, Mr. Wills. You took a criminology degree. At one time you were considering the law but you decided to make a career turn and take up surveillance work." Longley picked up the videocassette and handed it to Tom. Tom noticed that Mrs. Carstairs was visibly relieved to have the video removed from her home.

"You could say that I like to get my hands dirty."

Turning to Mrs. Carstairs, Tom continued, "Our best lead is the girl. It won't be easy to trace her. She may or may not be a runaway, a missing person."

"Do you have a daughter, yourself, Mr. Wills?"

"Yes, I do, ma'am. Her name is Cindy. She would be two now."

"Then you understand how I feel. You must find her, Mr. Wills. Find her and tell me that she's all right."

"I'll do my best, ma'am." Mrs. Carstairs shook his hand cordially. She was wheeled from the room again, leaving the details to Mr. Longley.

Tom waited for the door to click shut behind her before questioning Longley. "I know that a man like Mr. Carstairs wouldn't be rummaging through the bins of an X-rated video store looking for something like that tape. It's an unusual tape. I don't suppose someone could even find it in a commercial outlet. How do you suppose Mr. Carstairs obtained it?" Tom made an effort to sound neutral rather than accusatory.

"I honestly have no idea. I wish I could help you." The lawyer twirled about to face Tom. "There is one thing that I might mention, though. Mr. Carstairs' chauffeur and bodyguard, Tony Giamatti, has been missing for some days now, since the afternoon we watched the video together, in fact. I might start my investigation there, if I were you."

"Your suggestion is welcome. I'll keep it in mind."


	2. Chapter 2

Tom Wills kept a suitcase under his bed more or less permanently packed and ready for him to travel. He used to argue all the time with Amy about his need to travel for his work. She would say that he had just come back from three weeks out of town. He had to tell her that Charlesburg was a small town and if he stayed within the city limits he would be left with nothing but missing dog cases. He had to phone her every day. He missed that. Now no one cared where he was. He didn't much care himself.

He felt sorry for Mrs. Carstairs. She was genuinely appalled by that video. There was something about her manner that wasn't quite right to Tom. When she mentioned her husband's death she seemed not merely grief-stricken, which was expected, but horrified. Tom turned it over in his mind but could make nothing of it.

Tom's thoughts were drawn back to the viewing of the video. He was reminded of that awful sensation of being overwhelmed and losing control. As he thought about it he felt anxiety gripping his body again. He couldn't get the image of the girl out of his mind, her thin white body bare and defenseless, trembling with pain and terror. How did vice cops who see this sort of material all the time deal with it, he wondered. He had always prided himself on his professional cool, his mental toughness. He had to admit that his heavy drinking of late had taken its toll on him. Perhaps it wasn't only his physical health that was affected. It wasn't that difficult for him to see this objectively. It had no relevance to changing his behavior, though.

He had spent so little time in his apartment in recent weeks he was surprised at how blank the walls looked. When he was on a case and not spending most of his time in hotel rooms he had the habit of pinning up photos and pages of notes on the walls. He thought it might stimulate his thinking. He was a bit obsessive that way. Images of the case would stay in his thoughts whether the pictures were in front of his eyes or not. The walls were bare now. He was not the decorator type. He didn't believe in putting up pictures merely for decoration. Still it was embarrassing and a bit alarming how plain the apartment was, as if all the furniture and the accessories were merely rented and not personal at all. Yet everything had come from the house. Nothing meaningful was attached to those bits of wood and fabric. They had ceased to be connected to Tom's memories.

He remembered once standing over Cindy's cradle when he had arrived back from a case in Miami. Amy was asleep in the next room and he hadn't wanted to disturb her but he felt a need to see his daughter. There she was, wide awake in the moonlight and smiling up at him.

The cradle was gone and the house was sold. There never was much moonlight coming through his apartment window. He missed that neat two-storey house with its dull gray siding. He had always meant to repaint it. Unusual as his job was, that house gave him a bit of middle-class respectability. It gave him a foot in the door of ordinary society.

That night he was dreaming. He was walking down a corridor. It was dimly lit and he couldn't make out any significant details. He knew that he was approaching the room where the girl was. As he came to the door he saw there was an inscription on the door in block letters but he could not read it. He bent forward and peered through the keyhole. He jumped back startled as he saw an eye, blood-shot and staring, looking back at him. He recovered himself before leaning forward again to the keyhole. The face on the other side had pulled back. Tom saw that it was himself in the room. The Tom that was outside the room had a clear view of the room now. The girl was seated in the chair, as in the video, but she was not shackled to it. She was seen from the side so that her face was hidden and she could be identified only by her long black hair. The Tom in the room walked up slowly behind her. Suddenly she reached out a pale hand and grasped him by the wrist. He felt a searing pain. Tom woke up gasping. It took him some minutes to re-orient himself and calm down.

He had difficulty returning to sleep after that. He reached for the bottle of vodka in the drawer of the night stand and was through a third of it before passing out on the bed. He awoke again and it was still the middle of the night and his brain was swimming. He felt an urgent need to retch. He was on his knees over the toilet, shivering. He was covered in a cold sweat as if he had stepped out of the rain. When he put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes the bed seemed to be tilting like a boat on high seas. He felt his mind slipping into unconsciousness and he was grateful.

There was the girl to be tracked down. Work still motivated him. It was easier to keep moving. He didn't like to think what would happen if the work dried up and he had idle time. Unpromising as this angle was he felt it was necessary to make the effort. He had told Mrs. Carstairs he would pursue it and she expected him to report on his progress. He knew there were upwards of a million missing young people in America at any one time, from babies snatched from their cribs to college students emptying out their bank accounts to drop out of society in pursuit of some elusive paradise.

Tom threw the suitcase into the trunk and drove to Cleveland. In Cleveland there was a resource center for the Department of Child Services, housed in a dreary, antiseptic set of forty-year-old offices. Tom figured this was a clue where child services stood in the priority list of government responsibilities. There was a room open to the public with computers set up on wooden tables and the walls lined with cabinets holding card files. This was a resource mainly for professionals like himself who had dealings with possible missing persons.

Tom imagined he could feel a sense of resignation and hopelessness in these offices. There were too many cases, too many photos, and little chance of finding anyone who did not want to be found, short of hiring a private investigator for each case, and of course there was no budget for that. He wondered how anyone could work in these offices long without be desensitized to the real human stories contained in those file folders.

Tom went to the manager's office and introduced himself. "My name is Tom Wills. I'm a licensed private investigator in this state. I'll keep the story short and simple. I have a wealthy client who picked up a girl hitchhiking last week. The girl seemed anxious, frightened. She might have been sick. After she got out of the car my client started worrying out her. She thought she could have done more for the girl. She hired me to see if I could find her or contact her family."

"Do you mind if we check your number?" Tom pushed his private investigator license card across the table.

Tom had always known he had a talent for skating over the truth without ever touching it. His job was one in which his talent could be put to regular use. He used to hide bottles of liquor around the house. Amy would always ask him if he had alcohol in the house. Tom couldn't understand why she had to ask the question when she always knew the answer. She would give him the most scathing looks. Perhaps she needed to have the moral upper hand. Perhaps she held out the hope that one day he would say no and all the spots would be empty. At some point he realized that she found the bottles but didn't bother to remove them.

As Tom went through one photo after another of missing teenagers he was steeling himself for the eventuality of meeting the friends and family of the missing girl. The thought receded from his mind with the hours. The problem was he could not narrow the time frame—he couldn't tell when the video was shot. The fact that it was on VHS was curious in itself but this wasn't evidence of much. It could have been shot in another format and copied. Mr. Carstairs might have been more comfortable with the older format. Neither did he have a clue where the video was shot, although it made sense to start by assuming it was local or in the region. The pictures of dark haired girls all began swimming and blurring in his head. Still there was no match for the girl on the video. With each file he clicked through there was a deepening in his vague sense of loss, a feeling he was only half conscious of.

Tom imagined that around the globe there must be an audience of thousands for videos like his. He thought of lonely men spending hours in the dark in front of their computer screens searching for material like this. They formed networks of contacts. Modern communication technology, Tom noted with disgust, allowed otherwise isolated individuals to support and encourage one another in their repugnant habits.

He took a break for lunch and found himself in the bar across the street. Once Tom had a drink in his hand the memory of all his bad bouts with alcohol disappeared, however recent they were. He limited himself to a second whisky and stepped back onto the street. He felt pleased with himself for stopping at two. When he was on a case he could go days without heavy drinking. He squinted even though it was another overcast day. He wondered when his eyes had become so sensitive to light. He reached into his jacket pocket for a pair of dark glasses.

He only stayed another hour at the resource center. An intuition told him that the girl was either not in these files or her file was too old and distant to be easily found.

He returned to his motel room, stopping at a store to buy liquor. He picked two bottles of vodka and one of rum. He would have bought more but he didn't know how long he would be in town or if he would need to travel. The advantage of vodka, Tom knew, was that if he was sipping it during the day it wouldn't be as easy to detect on his breath. He didn't fool himself, though, into thinking that he escaped detection. People often seemed to have an uncanny ability to recognize him as a drinker, as if a red capital letter 'D' had been stamped on his forehead.

Tom sat up late in the motel bed watching the video over and over again on his laptop. He had had the video digitized and saved to his laptop. The video lab technician he often consulted could have done it for him but Tom felt this video was too sensitive a matter to trust to a lab so he rented the equipment himself. A glass of liquor in his hand, he looked at the video image by image, thinking that there might be a detail that he had overlooked which could furnish a clue. He could not get the idea out of his mind that if only he watched it one more time he could find the key to his investigation.

Tom found himself putting off sleeping. He had to admit that the nightmare of the previous night still disturbed him. He got in the car and drove nowhere in particular. He liked the quiet streets at night. Either a crowd, in which he could immerse himself, or empty streets were tolerable. Driving at night suited his image of the private eye. It wasn't safe for him to drive and he knew it. He had once woken up in a field, barbed wire wrapped around the car and the windshield broken, with no memory of how he got there. He kept slow tonight and stayed within the city limits.

Tom passed along a street on which prostitutes were working. He knew it was highly unlikely that he would see the girl in the video working the streets but he couldn't help looking at their faces. There was a light mist and the gaudy neon signs of the stripper bars had a soft glow to them. Tom thought of all those endless faces he saw in the files and he imagined them populating an endless row of bars and dark street corners, lining up to draw the attention of a slow parade of passing cars.

Tom realized that if he was going to drive around randomly in the city he had better look at a road map so he wouldn't get lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood. As he reached across to the glove compartment he saw the white gown of the silent passenger in his car. He knew he must have yelled out in surprise. He nearly swerved the car off the road. A girl had appeared in the dark next to him. Tom pulled over and hit the brakes. He took a breath and forced himself to turn to look over at the passenger side. He had time to see the girl's pale face turning towards him with a relaxed, expectant gaze, as if she knew him well. For a moment she seemed convincingly real. Then the seat was empty again.


	3. Chapter 3

Tom did not wake until twelve thirty in the afternoon. His head was throbbing. He popped two Tylenol in his mouth but had trouble swallowing. His throat muscles were a little sluggish, he thought. He took a look at the rum. He told himself that the alcohol would take the edge off his nerves and it would be easier to face the world. With six or seven ounces in his stomach he would feel that steady mellowness he aimed for, a state in which he felt confident and competent. At least that was what he told himself. He had to admit that, time after time, he could not stop there.

There was a shop he knew called 'Sam's of Hollywood', a sort of one-stop emporium of adult entertainment. Tom's initial idea was to pick up a sampling of magazines to see whether they had advertisements for videos like Mr. Carstairs' or contacts with filmmakers who might produce something like that. As he passed down aisles crowded on either side with racks of magazines he felt his disgust rising. There was so much of this filth there was no telling how long it would take to check out the companies that could have produced the video. Besides, he had the suspicion that the amateurishness of the video was not a deliberate effect but indicated that the men involved were not filmmakers but simply perpetrators of the crimes being recorded. Still, there had to be a way that a person like Mr. Carstairs could have gotten hold of the thing. There had to be some distributor or trafficker who acted as a go-between. Tom had considered, and couldn't eliminate, the possibility that Carstairs had himself hired some vicious thugs to play out this scenario for his pleasure.

Tom picked up some magazines almost at random and came up to the checkout counter. The clerk there was wearing a black sleeveless t-shirt, revealing an impressive sprawl of blue-black tattoo ink over his right arm. His hair was spiky and dyed black. Tom thought, if Mrs. Carstairs can pay for an expert opinion, so could he. "That'll be $32.63," the clerk said, barely looking up.

"I'm looking for a certain type of video material," Tom began and dropped his voice low, "illegal stuff."

"There's not much illegal these days, Pops," the clerk said skeptically. Tom judged him to be in his late twenties.

"I mean videos that would draw police attention if they knew of it. Real action, not play-acting. I was wondering if you might have contacts to the underground."

"What are you, a cop?"

"No, I'm not a cop." Tom had abandoned the suit for a simple black leather jacket and black jeans. He knew he looked enough like a cop without dressing like one as well.

"No offense but you look more like a cop than you do a fan of adult entertainment. Not that I would want to stereotype our customers. They come in all shapes and sizes. You have a way of looking around like a cop, like you're making mental notes. Most people here would rather not see or be seen."

"It's a lonely hobby, I guess. Look, I'm a private detective. Let's say I represent a client who doesn't frequent this type of establishment. Do you get coffee breaks in this place? Want to step out to the parking lot and we can talk?"

"Let me say on the record that as an employee of this shop we have no dealings with anything underground, but as a private citizen I'm open to bribes."

Tom stood in the parking lot. The orange stucco of the building in the next lot seemed especially garish for some reason. The sun shone behind a thin overcast, like a headlight that never emerges from a fog. He was glad he had his dark glasses on. The clerk came out.

"What's your name?" Tom asked.

"Max."

"Tom. Don't call me 'Pops'. I'm willing to pay for your time, as a consultant, if you can help me. $120 a day, travel expenses if we need to leave town."

"That shouldn't be necessary if you just want to get hold of the stuff."

"I might want to get in touch with the producers. But leave that to me. You only need to point me in the right direction."

That evening Tom and Max arrived at a restored historic building, a former post office with a grand interior spanned by a high ceiling supported on stone columns. Max led the way down a dark, narrow staircase. There was a hall on this level parallel to the one on the ground floor but the ceiling was low and the space was dimly lit by old lights hanging from the ceiling. Wooden tables were lined up in two rows. On the tables were cardboard boxes and plastic tubs from which vendors were selling videos, books and magazines. A motley assortment of people were seated behind the tables, pudgy teenage boys, young women in punkish regalia, bored middle-aged men, even a grandmotherly-looking old woman knitting. It reminded Tom of a comic book or record swap meet.

Max said, "Before we start, I've have you know I'm straight."

"Let me be the first to congratulate you. I'm happy to know I'm not working with a pervert."

"I mean that I may watch the merchandise. Some I like, some not so much. I don't get turned on by the violence, if you're wondering. Let me warn you, there's some pretty sick stuff out there. What about you?"

"I'm not a pervert either."

"So you're not turned on by it. At least you aren't now. It alters your brain chemistry, you know. It changes you without you knowing it. There's a saying in the business, 'What's seen can't be unseen.'"

"I think I already know that."

"These transient markets give a good cross-section of what's available outside the commercial outlets." Tom glanced at the offerings in one of the plastic containers. There were hand-drawn cardboard dividers: 'Children', 'Animals'. "Oh, look. Bestiality, that's always popular," Max continued. "Lots of violence, sado-masochism. More than you can shake a stick at."

"I don't get it. Doesn't anyone object to this business being carried on here?"

Max shrugged. "Guess no one cares whether they're selling baseball cards or porn so long as they pay the rent."

Tom was drawn to a table with a sign that read, 'Way beyond XXXXX'. The man behind it looked to be in his fifties. His gray hair was trimmed short. He looks like my sixth grade science teacher, Tom thought. He watched Tom blandly from behind gold metal framed glasses. Tom approached the table. "You have any videos of violent assault on young girls? I don't mean staged. Real."

"Is your friend a cop?" the vendor asked Max who had stepped over. Max shook his head. The vendor picked up a couple of videos in plastic cases. "You might find these to be to your liking," he said with a sly grin. "There's a special on. Fifty per cent off the second if you buy two."

"Do you suppose you could give me a contact for your source if I was interested in more?"

"Maybe."

"Are they local?"

"Nah, this stuff comes mostly from Southeast Asia."

Tom frowned. He paid up. The vendor inserted the videos into a brown paper bag. Tom asked,"Heard of anyone local offering to sell videos like this?"

The vendor shook his head. "There's always talk but nobody brings me anything that's worth my trouble."

Tom and Max made a perfunctory pass over the other tables and were moving to leave when a teenager came up to them. "Hey," the boy said, "I heard what you were asking for. You're wasting your time here. The stuff you're looking for is on the Internet. It's not like these mom and pop operations. Everything's available there. It's open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And it's all anonymous. Here, check out this site." He passed Tom a slip of paper with writing on it. Tom nodded and thanked him.

Tom and Max were seated on the second-hand furniture in Max's apartment watching the videos. "No, this is definitely not real," said Tom studying the television image carefully.

"Ooh, it looks pretty convincing to me." Max was squirming in his chair. Sometimes he would run his hands over his face and shrink from the images on the set. Tom thought he must have looked similar back at the Carstairs mansion.

"That's got to be fake blood," Tom concluded.

Over the sounds of screams and shouted obscenities coming from the television, Max said, "Why are you here? I don't get it. Yeah, I know about your case, but don't tell me that's all it means to you. I can see it in your face. You're a man with a mission."

The tape came to an end. Max turned off the machine with the remote and got off his chair. "I need a drink after that." He went to the kitchen area and took a bottle of rye out of a cabinet. He handed Tom the bottle and he took a swig from it. "You have family?" Max asked.

"I had a wife and a daughter. My wife left me over a year ago."

Max shook his head in sympathy and took a drink. "Do they still live nearby?"

"No, she had a job offer in San Diego and left back in June." Tom's voice remained a low monotone. He closed his eyes and took another drink.

"Maybe you should watch your drinking," suggested Max. "Liquor will lay waste to your body. I'm younger and I know I'm going to hurt after this." Max paused to look at Tom. "No wonder you don't take off your shades. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? You look terrible. You're pale. Your eyes are rimmed in red. There are dark bags under your eyes. You don't get enough sleep."

"Don't nag me. I don't respond well to nagging."

"All right, I was just trying to be helpful. But what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to avoid looking into a mirror every chance I get." Tom sat moodily, cradling the bottle in his hands.

"It's too bad you're not one of those drunks who gets uninhibited and become the life of the party. You're the kind of drunk that just gets more depressed and worried."

"Thanks for letting me know." Abruptly Tom stood up and announced, "I've got to report to my client."

"You're not going to drive in that condition, are you?"

"I'll walk it off first." He pulled out his wallet and handed Max the cash he had promised. Max was a little surprised at the abruptness of it.

Tom stepped out unsteadily to the street. A light rain must have fallen while he was in Max's apartment. The asphalt had a velvety black sheen to it.

Tom reflected that he and Amy had had a normal social life once. Their friends had gradually found excuses to avoid them. There had been one too many embarrassing scenes in public. None of it could be laughed off as madcap farce. He would have to apologize, which sometimes felt like he was having his internal organs removed. Then he would have to endure the mournful look of sympathy he received in response. After a while it became awkward to meet up with friends, and ties became weak and then disappeared. Now that he thought about it he was surprised that Amy had said so little of what she had sacrificed living with him. Maybe it was loyalty, he thought.

Tom flipped open his phone and called. "Mrs. Carstairs? Tom Wills here. Sorry to phone you at night. Hope I'm not disturbing you."

"No, it's fine. I was hoping to hear from you."

"I've been going throught the missing persons files trying to find a match but there's nothing so far. I think I'll have to take a different approach."

"I appreciate your efforts, Mr. Wills. Please keep trying."

"There's something that's been nagging me. I know this is a delicate subject, Mrs. Carstairs, but could you tell me the circumstances of your husband's death? Was there anything unusual?"

There was a gasp at the other end. Tom felt an instant of alarm that he had been tactless and she would fire him. Then she said, "He was a good man, or at least he tried to be. He didn't deserve to die like that. No one does." She took a deep breath and then began to explain calmly, as if she had been holding these thoughts in her mind for some time and needed to release them. "In the last week he was insane. That's not a very sensitive way of putting it, I know, but that's the blunt truth. He was raving that he saw the girl. At the time, of course, I didn't know what girl he meant, but that didn't stop him. He kept raving about seeing a girl with long black hair. At first it was in his dreams. Nightmares, I should say. Then he would see her in the room in broad daylight. Once he screamed loud, blood-curdling screams. When I asked him what it was, he said the girl had grabbed him, that there were marks on his body where she had touched him.

"He became morbidly afraid of water. He wouldn't go near a bathtub. His doctors had psychiatric nurses brought in to care for him. No private hospital was private enough, of course. They kept him shot up with enough drugs to tranquilize a horse but when he had a clear spell he would state calmly how many days he had left to live. He seemed to know exactly." Mrs. Carstairs broke down at this and there was a long silence on the phone. "The last two days, I think, he was completely resigned to his fate. He spent hours talking to Longley about what to do with his companies after his death. He was overcome with emotion. He told me how much he loved me and how grateful he was for the years we had together. It was utterly wrenching for me but I couldn't play along with him. You couldn't expect me to believe him and accept it as his last farewell.

"On the last day we asked the nurses to be especially vigilant. John was quiet all day. In the evening there was a power failure in the house that distracted us. The servants were setting out candles in the rooms when we heard the sound of a television set. It was very loud but it was only static, the way it is when there's no signal. We were mystified and looking to see which set it was when we heard a scream. We rushed to my husband's room but it was too late. He had crawled into a wardrobe and died there. His face—I'm sorry, I can't speak of it, even now.

"Mr. Wills, you must think this is all nonsense and foolishness but there's one more thing I can't explain. The carpet in his room was sopping wet."

Tom did not easily accept that there was anything uncanny about this dramatic story. He was trained as a rational investigator. On the other hand it was useless denying the unsettling reminder of his vision of the girl. She had seemed so vivid, so real, not at all ethereal or ghostlike. Tom smirked. Not that he knew what ghosts were supposed to look like.

Back in the motel room Tom looked up the Internet address the teenager has passed to him. This was a section of a site dedicated to paranormal phenomena. Tom thought at first that this must have been a mistake or a prank. There was a private discussion forum called 'The Ringers' Forum'. On the slip of paper was another word: 'Moesko'. Tom assumed that this must be the password to gain entrance to the forum. He typed it and found that it worked. He noticed that there were discussion threads related to a so-called 'killer video'. Typically, an anonymous poster reported that he had friends who had watched a video that was supposed to kill every viewer in exactly one week. They claimed to be safe because they had copied the tape and given it to someone else to watch. It sounded like a typical urban legend, Tom scoffed. As he read further he came to posters who claimed to have seen the tape themselves and experienced the consequences. Descriptions of the content of the tape were conflicting. Some were consistent with the tape Tom saw but others were bizarrely different. Tom took note of this but continued reading. There were descriptions of visions and nightmares involving a girl that sounded familiar. Others had the distortions of vision that he was experiencing. There were posters who actually wanted to see the video. They wanted to experience the thrill of the danger, and to see how the video would alter their consciousness. Some of these people deliberately passed the video on to their friends, to share the experience. 'Ringers' were what they were called. They seemed almost a little cult.

Tom was beginning to think of his own seven day deadline. He had seen the video on Sunday. This was the second day. He was aware of a creeping anxiety, which he felt as a tightness in his abdominal muscles and a quickening of his heartbeat. He wondered if he should have been more alarmed than he was.

Tom came to a mention of a name. This stood out for him in the sea of anonymity. The name was 'Rachel Keller'. She was spoken of with a certain reverance as the person who had uncovered the story of the video. With relief Tom abandoned the site he had been reading, with its vague, meandering, repetitious stories that contained so little confirmable fact and did a search for her name. He found a story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer back in March about the mysterious deaths of some young people. All of them had died at the same time apparently one week after they had watched a video together at some secluded mountain inn. Their deaths were not explained by clear or likely causes. Tom thought that her editor must have had a lot of faith in her to let her submit a story as speculative and bizarre as that and print it. That story was the last she filed for the Seattle paper, or at least the last available online.

Tom continued searching. The reporter herself had featured in another story. She had led police to a well at a place called Shelter Mountain Inn. The skeletal remains of a girl had been recovered from the well, apparently a victim of murder. The girl had been identified as Samara Morgan of Moesko Island. Tom assumed some trail had led Rachel Keller to that body in the well but Rachel had never published the story of her investigation. She must have known much more than she told the police.


	4. Chapter 4

Tom had no nightmares that night but he was still sleeping fitfully, waking up at four in the morning and again at regular intervals after that until he pulled himself out of bed around eleven. He was still groggy. He had that feeling that his brain wasn't properly connected to his body. Max was right of course. There were zombies that looked better than he did. And zombies that had more emotional expression.

He parted the blinds and peered through them. The light was brighter today but there seemed to be something odd with his vision. He couldn't focus his eyes properly. Bright areas were hazy and glaring, as if he were looking through a glass smeared with oil. Shadows were darker than they should have been. He couldn't make out any details in them.

He took a shower. He closed his eyes and gave his consciousness up to the sensation of the stream of hot, steamy water. He swayed a little side to side in rhythm to his heartbeat. He was startled at the feeling of something around his throat. He opened his eyes. Black strands of hair were wrapped around his neck like tentacles, choking him. He grabbed hold of them with both hands and pulled but the locks did not loosen. Tom peered over his shoulder and saw that the strands of hair were coming out of the shower head, as if the water had transformed itself into hair. He couldn't pull them further out of the shower head. Their grip tightened. He thought he would pass out when, twisting and struggling, he suddenly broke free and fell into the wall. As suddenly as the attack had begun it was ended. The hair seemed to have vanished except for a few limp strands lying on the bottom of the bathtub. He imagined he could still feel the pressure on his throat. Looking in the mirror, Tom could see red marks on his neck.

Despite the warm, steamy air he sank down on the edge of the bathtub shivering. His limbs felt numb. It was difficult for him to admit to fear but now he felt genuinely shaken.

* * *

It was late evening when the doorbell rang at Rachel Keller's house. "I'll get it, Aidan," she said. She looked through the peephole at a man in a black raincoat. She opened the door but kept the chain in place. "What can I do for you?" She was wary enough of strange men on her doorstep, even in a town as peaceful as Astoria, but it only took one close look at the man's strained, sickly face before she decided to open the door. She could guess why he was here.

"Rachel Keller? I'm sorry to disturb you at night. My name is Tom Wills. Let me explain why I've come." He couldn't help noticing, in spite of his other preoccupations, that she was very attractive. She had a sympathetic, expressive face framed by wavy blond hair. He found himself staring at her pale blue eyes. She took his raincoat. Underneath he was wearing his suit. She could smell the liquor on his breath.

Aidan stood in the doorway.

"Aidan! Don't you have homework to do?"

"I'm all finished, Rachel."

" Well, find something else to do," Rachel said, a little annoyed. She and Tom sat down on the sofa.

"All right, Rachel."

"Does he always call you 'Rachel'?" Tom asked.

"He's done that since he was very little," she said with an embarrassed shrug. "He says the name suits me, whatever that means."

Tom proceeded to tell his story in detail. When he was finished Rachel seemed puzzled and worried. She said, "Mr. Wills, I wish I could help you, but the video you describe is completely different from what I—what we all saw. Yet so much of what you've told me sounds familiar. It's like a nightmare that you've had before." She left the room and came back with an expandable plastic file holder under one arm. It was stuffed with papers, photographs and newspaper clippings.

"I've kept my notes on the story. Most of it never saw print. You're welcome to read it when you have time." She paused for a moment. "You know, I haven't shown this to anyone since I left Seattle."

Tom nodded appreciatively. "I already know the outline of what happened. Could Samara Morgan be the girl in the video? I couldn't find a picture of her online."

"Yes, I suppose she could be, but that description could match millions of girls."

"I have the video with me. If I could show it to you…"

"Yes, I want to see it." Seeing his hesitation, she added with a small laugh, "I'm sure it wouldn't hurt me. I suppose I must be immune to lethal videos."

"Are you sure?" Tom was genuinely anxious for her. Rachel nodded. She was not sure, of course, but she was not one to shrink from possible danger.

Rachel's face was expressive of her sympathetic suffering as she watched the video. She held her face in her hands and emitted little gasps whenever blows were struck. When it was finished she looked downcast. She was massaging the back of her neck with one hand. The wrist of that hand was clasped in her other hand. "It's her, Samara. I saw her on videotape shot at the Eola County Psychiatric Hospital. That could have been the same equipment. It could even have been the same room. Yet it's a completely different video." In spite of what she knew, Rachel smiled grimly. "It's all so insane. You think this video could kill, too?"

"We don't know that. We only know that Mr. Carstairs died, apparently a week after watching it, but he may not have been a well man. There could be a natural explanation."

"You watched it yourself. How many days ago?"

"It was on Sunday. This is the third day." Tom's pronouncement was as flat and unemotional as most of his speech was.

Rachel looked at him with distress. "You don't really believe. You must! There's too much of a risk. You're already experiencing hallucinations and nightmares."

"This morning, in the shower. That wasn't a hallucination. I found the hair in the bottom of the bathtub."

"Yes, I know. I meant…" Her voice trailed away. The two of them lapsed into silence. Rachel was trying to think her way through the new information. "The video I saw in Seattle was full of images that gave clues about Samara's life and death. That led us to the well where her body was. Now that her body's been recovered it's no longer relevant. Could the tape have changed? Is that too crazy to imagine? Remember the kids in Seattle recorded the video when they set the machine to an empty channel."

"I'm not entirely willing to accept some supernatural explanation. Suppose the video was shot at Eola Hospital at the time Samara was there. We may never know how it came to be trafficked."

"That thing is vile. How could anyone do that to a young girl? You have to know how much I hate her." Rachel turned to look away. "I lost Noah, Aidan's father. I wasn't in time to save him. She would have killed Aidan too." Rachel seemed to fold up and withdraw into the memory of her grief, but she didn't cry. "I had to pass on the video. It was the only way to save Aidan. Of course, I knew there was a good chance it would kill someone down the chain."

"I shouldn't be taking up any more of your time tonight. I'll be in touch with you tomorrow if you have the time."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I've forgotten you're on eastern time. You must be very tired. Please stay here tonight."

"I shouldn't trouble you."

"I insist. This is a sofa bed. I'll bring down some bed linens."

"You could easily send me away. You could say honestly that this doesn't involve you any more. The video, Samara, it's all my problem, not yours."

"It's my problem, too," she said firmly. "Don't think I don't want to avoid it. I quit my job and left Seattle. All my neighbors want to know why I left and what I'm doing working for a small town newspaper like the 'Daily Astorian'. My co-workers are the same. I thought I could start over in a new town where no one knows me and no one has been touched by this. I haven't told the people here about the past. I guess I thought I could run away. But it seems Samara won't let me.

"I did it all for Aidan. He managed to watch the video when I wasn't keeping an eye on him. I barely had time to save him. He's a sensitive child. He seemed to have some special connection with Samara. She seemed to communicate through him. After the horrors he experienced I wanted to raise him in a different, quieter place. It's what any parent would do, isn't it?"

Tom nodded sympathetically. "I'm surprised no one has sought you out so far, I mean those 'ringers' I told you about."

Rachel shook her head and grinned wryly. "Well, it looks like you've beaten the rush."

As Rachel hooked the bed sheet over the corners of the sofa bed mattress Tom became strongly aware of her physical presence. As Tom watched her, she smiled to herself.

Tom looked out the window of Rachel's living room before retiring for the night. Her house was on a steep rise from the river. It offered a good view of the houses in the neighborhood. Tom could see the yellow lights in the interior of each of them, like so many camp fires scattered across a wilderness.

Tom sighed. What was left of his case? He had been driven by the hope of finding the girl in the video but now he was weighed down by the realization that she had been dead for over twenty years. Yet he was surprised at himself. There was still something nagging at him, irritating him like liniment applied to the skin. There was still a desire driving him forward, to find those involved and bring them to justice, however belated. He could not simply let it rest. The very thought of that triggered his anger again. He expected that Mrs. Carstairs would agree that he should continue pursuing the case.


	5. Chapter 5

When Tom got up, Rachel was seated at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in her hands. There were lingering smells of cooking.

"Aidan's already gone to school?"

Rachel nodded. "Scott, my boss, is good enough to let me come in at nine. I have time to see him off in the morning. I could have made breakfast for you but I thought you would appreciate the extra sleep more." She was going to say that he looked like he had not slept well but she guessed that his drinking might be taking a toll on his body and it would be tactless to bring that up. She smiled gently at Tom.

"I like it when you smile. You don't do it nearly often enough."

"I guess I don't. It's the stress of the change in lifestyle, I suppose. Aidan's made a good adjustment. He's a very mature, intelligent boy. I didn't spend as much time with him as I should have when he was younger. I was too busy pursuing my career. Journalism can swallow up your life. I suppose you understand that."

"I do. It's the same in my line of work."

"You know, it's good to have an adult to talk to. I think I've spent a lot of time talking to children lately."

Tom helped himself to coffee. It made him smile to think of Rachel making the effort to play the happy homemaker. He had noticed that the house was a little disheveled and could use some cleaning. Normally, Rachel probably paid more attention to her work than to housekeeping.

Sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows. Tom thought it was a delicate wintry light, from a sky of washed out blue. The light tinged the bare branches of the cherry trees in the yard and filtered through the curtains with their pattern of tiny yellow flowers. For a moment Tom was overwhelmed by the desire to do nothing but sit in comfortable homely surroundings, to go nowhere. To stay with Rachel. "This must be a very pleasant town to raise a child in," he said wistfully.

Rachel had a smile with an edge to it. "It's a wonderful town. Everyone's been very kind to me. I'm a little too well known for my liking. I work for the newspaper and people see me at public events. I'm something of an attention magnet, being a mysterious outsider and a single mother. Word gets around pretty quickly in this town. I'm sure it'll be noted that you stayed the night."

"Your neighbors take an interest in your love life, do they?"

"Oh, I'm sure my neighbors would like to see me hooked up with Scott. Scott's a great guy. I know that. I guess I've never given him a fair chance. You want to know why, right?" Tom nodded. Rachel sighed. "I don't like to mix work and my personal life. It compromises my position. I would have to quit. I know he won't stop being publisher. He gave up a career in New York City to return and take over his family's newspaper after his father died.

"It's more than that though. I don't know where to begin telling him about the past, Seattle and Samara and all that. He might think I was a lunatic. Or that I had a very nervous disposition. Anything but the truth of the matter. Yet I have to tell him to be in a position of trust."

"I guess we don't have that problem with each other."

"No, we don't." There was a little smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. Her expression quickly turned serious again. "You know how smokers carry the smell of smoke around with them? I sometimes feel that Aidan and I carry Samara's curse around with us. The smell of death, I guess you could call it."

Looking at Tom her face showed a sudden grave concern. "What do you plan to do?" She was thinking that it was day four but she did not want to mention it.

Tom looked down at the floor. "I was going to find out what I can about the staff at Eola. I still want to know who those men were. It seems pointless and foolish, I know."

"I'll go with you." She looked a little embarrassed. "I can tell Scott I'm working on a story out of town. I can get a neighbor to pick up Aidan from school."

"No, I'm sorry. I work alone." He added, "I'll come back." It was an automatic response from Tom. The odd idea crept into his mind that venturing away from Rachel was like leaving a circle of protection. He smiled inwardly for entertaining such a silly notion.

And how ridiculous did he look, flirting with Rachel? He was bouncing around her like a puppy dog. Still, he felt comfortable talking to her and there was no denying she enjoyed the attention.

He phoned Mrs. Carstairs with the bad news. There was nothing they could do for the girl. He mumbled something to her about staying a few more days to tie up loose ends. As expected, she accepted that he needed more time and would continue to pay for his services.

It was an hour-and-a-half drive up the coast, on the winding rural roads that skirted the foothills of the mountains. As the morning progressed the brightness of the morning sky was lost to streaks of cloud, until it was gradually covered with gray overcast. There was even the possibility of an approaching storm. Mile after mile on either side of the road was dense forest with trees dripping with moisture.

At times Tom's vision would become blurry, as if he was looking through mists. A light might pierce those mists and cause him stabbing pain, so he continued to wear sunglasses. The world around him was fading into a murky twilight. Tom felt a gnawing desire for alcohol to suppress his sense of alarm.

There was a suffocating silence here. Tom tried rolling down the window in hopes of at least hearing the sounds of nature but the stillness was unbroken, even by the songs of birds. There was no traffic in either direction. Tom could have been the last human on earth for all he knew. The miles passed with no change, increasingly dreamlike. Tom was losing concentration and in danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

There on the road in front of him appeared the girl, spectral in her white gown. Somehow he was not surprised. For a moment he was staring at her mesmerized. She looked at him steadily. Then he swerved the car hard to the right. The tires screeched. He had to staighten the steering again to avoid crashing into the ditch. Tom slammed on the brakes. He put his head out the window and looked back. There was no sign of any body. He got out of the car and looked over the road. She had entirely vanished without leaving a trace.

He thought of the time when he went off the road and landed in a ditch. Cindy was in the infant car seat in the back and began bawling. That had prevented him from blacking out. The car was stuck in the ditch and he had to wait for the police to arrive. That incident had sort of closed the door between Amy and himself. She could usually contain her temper but she was never more than civil to him after that.

He realized there was this fatalistic streak in him. He could have fought for more time with Cindy but she was so young and it only seemed right that her mother should care for her. He knew he hadn't spent much time with her before. He could have raised objections to them moving to the west coast but he didn't want to be responsible for stalling Amy's career. It was easy enough to cast him as the monster. He didn't want to provide any more substance to that than he already had. He already felt they were lost. Maybe it was because his self esteem had been ground down over these last months. He thought it was for the best. Now he wondered if Cindy would even know him as a parent. He would visit and it would be a duty to her. It would be like when he visited his aunts and uncles in Vermont as a child. Would Amy make excuses and create delays? As Cindy got older would she be sent to summer camp? Would she be away visiting Amy's relatives? He realized that the less contact he had with her the easier it was to portray him as a negligent parent, that he simply didn't care about her. He never knew what to say to children. He had always felt awkward with them. Now he was afraid it would be the same when he saw her.

Thoughts of Cindy were never far from his mind but if he allowed himself to start thinking this way he knew he would spiral down into a morass of self pity. He had to pull himself out of it right now.

There was a road sign just ahead that indicated he was outside the town of Prestwick. He thought he had better make a stop there. It was a coastal town that still had a salmon fishing fleet moored at its docks. He pulled up at a gas station, more in the hope of learning something than for the gas. There was a white-haired man behind the counter. "Am I going the right way to get to Eola Psychiatric Hospital?" Tom asked.

"It's a couple of miles outside of town but, yeah, you're headed the right direction."

"It's an odd location for a hospital."

"Why do you say that?"

"I mean it's so remote."

"Seems to me people like it that way."

"Any interesting news coming from there recently?"

"What are you, a reporter?"

"Yes, I work for the _Daily Astorian_."

"Then maybe you should tell me." Tom shook his head. The old man regarded him steadily. "No news ever _comes_ from Eola but there's always news about it. Not particularly pleasant news."

"Try me."

"Well, every few weeks lately we hear about a lawsuit being filed against the hospital, from Eola survivors, they call themselves. You'll have to look it up yourself if you want the details. I'd just as soon not know the details."

Tom knew that small town newspapers carried stories of local detail that the metropolitan dailies would never even hear about, much less assign a reporter to. He made his way to the library. He asked about recent stories on Eola Psychiatric. Within the last month there was an article about a man filing a legal action against the hospital. As the gas station attendant mentioned, this was one in a number of lawsuits that followed a state review into allegations of abuse at the institution. The report had been published the previous year. It found widespread sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of patients at Eola going back decades, as well as unexpected and uninvestigated deaths.

The man filing the suit, Bill McMaster, alleged that as a youth he had been sexually assaulted by staff at the hospital but had always been afraid to report it. He had been subjected to forcible immersion in tubs of ice cold water until he nearly drowned. He had been confined for long periods in isolation. It was, he claimed, a way to keep him under their control. Bill's lawsuit was aimed not only at Eola Psychiatric but at a short list of men who committed abuses or knew about them and did nothing. It had been over twenty years ago, about the time Samara Morgan was a patient there. Tom had set off that morning with the sense that it was futile to go to Eola. Even if he could find a way to access the personnel or patient records, there were far too many of both. This at least was a starting point.

Eola Psychiatric Hospital was a thick-walled concrete bunker of a building, painted a cream color on the exterior. The regularly spaced windows were small, deep set and barred on the inside. Tom knew that he would get no cooperation from staff. He could have tried to break into the basement as Noah had, but there was the chance that they had improved security because of that incident.

Tom approached the front desk and told the receptionist that he was a reporter for the _Daily Astorian _and he was there to do a story about the lawsuits filed against the hospital. He asked to be able to look at the personnel records going back thirty years. The receptionist was surprised at his forwardness but she was clearly well practiced at giving the correct response. She told him that any requests for information needed to be submitted to the State Department of Health. He could expect a response in a month or so.

"That's very disappointing to hear," Tom said blandly. On his way out he made a turn towards the men's room he spotted down a corridor to one side.

Tom paused to look at himself in the mirror. He remembered telling Max that he would avoid looking into mirrors. He grimaced. So this was what Rachel had to look at, he thought. He took out the metal flask of brandy he had in his coat pocket and poured some down his throat. He couldn't help but think of how his hairline was receding. In the center there was a sort of triangle of hair that remained, like a rocky cape that resisted the erosion of waves. Odd that he should think of this now. He was worried about hair loss when he was supposed to die in a few days.

Tom opened the door, saw that no one was observing him, and headed for the stairwell at the end of the corridor. It was an old building and Tom saw that the door at the basement level was not alarmed. He had concealed a crate-opening tool in his coat. He used this to pry open the door.

In the basement ranks of file cabinets were gathering dust. Tom switched on a tiny flashlight and began searching the personnel records. Some of the men he looked up couldn't be eliminated from suspicion but there was nothing out of the ordinary in their records. In the file of an orderly named Vincent Hardwick he was excited to find a disciplinary report. Hardwick and two other men were accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with a female patient. They had all been suspended without pay. Tom noted that the patient was discharged and did not press charges. The men were reinstated. Checking the dates, Tom concluded that these men were working at the time of Samara's stay. All had left years ago. There was no current information on them in the records.

Tom drove north. He took a table at a diner and ordered the pot roast with mashed potatoes. He plugged in his laptop and set to work. Tom knew of databases that the general public could not access but he had IDs and passwords that would work. Finding these men, if they were still in the state, would be routine. There was something arbitrary about narrowing the hunt down to these men, Tom knew, but this was what his mind had focused on.

Tom suddenly felt very conscious of being alone. He couldn't help thinking of Rachel sitting on the other side of the table. He imagined saying witty things to her. All of his actions seemed mechanical and dead without her. He wondered if it was only the thought of returning to her that kept him going.

Tom drove to Tacoma, south of Seattle. He had the address of one of the suspects on his list. He came to a white-stuccoed bungalow. The woman who answered the doorbell was in her mid-thirties, with frizzled red hair. She wore a sweatshirt and track pants. She had a strong smell of cigarette smoke. "Can I help you?" she asked, not sounding helpful.

"I'm looking for Vincent Hardwick."

Her face hardened even more. "Well, you're ten days too late. My father died then. What are you, one of those reporters hounding him? Is it about the lawsuit?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is." Tom peered beside the woman to get a view of the interior. Suddenly, like an electric shock surging through his entire body, Tom saw a vision of the darkened living room of the house. The heavy-set body of a man was dangling lifeless from the ceiling. The body swung slowly backwards and forwards, describing the figure eight symbol for infinity. The only light came through a window behind the body so that Tom could not see the face. The rope around his neck seemed to be black, braided hair. The vision passed and Tom grunted, lurching forward as if he had escaped someone's grip.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'll be fine," Tom gasped weakly. "I just wanted to hear your father's side of the story."

"Well, you're too late for that."

"Did he commit suicide?"

"Yes," the woman answered uncertainly. "Now clear off before I call the cops."

Tom turned meekly to leave, barely able to hold his head upright. He paused. "Maybe you can save me some time and trouble, ma'am. Do you know these other men?" He handed her the list.

"Tom Aspinall. Herbert Gray. They're men that my father worked with at Eola. They were named in the lawsuit too. " She added grimly. "My father went to Tom Aspinall's funeral three weeks ago. They didn't say how he died. Herbert Gray, my father hasn't seen in years."

The overcast that had darkened with the declining day broke at the horizon. A pale late afternoon light raked over the lawn. Tom noticed lying there a metal toy car and a garishly colored cartoon character in soft plastic. "Your son's?" he asked. She nodded.


	6. Chapter 6

Tom entered Daniel Longley's downtown office unannounced.

"Sir, do you have an appointment?" The exasperated receptionist made a show of trying to intervene.

"I think Mr. Longley will want to see me." Tom found Longley's door and opened it.

"Ms. Evans, that'll be fine." Momentarily startled, Longley quickly understood the situation. His face hardened momentarily in anger and then relaxed as he took on his customary suave persona. "What can I do for you, Mr. Wills?"

"I think you know what I want to talk about. I could have called for a meeting with you but there was the risk that you might be tempted to arrange a reception with some hired goons.

"From the day that I was hired for this case, I was sure that Mr. Carstairs thought the videotape was authentic. Otherwise, why put it in the safe? Therefore he had to be careful that a police investigation could never follow the trail to him. He might have sent his chauffeur to the liquor store but there are few people he would have entrusted this transaction to. The one who comes to mind is you, Mr. Longley. No doubt you were thinking the same thing. You anticipated this line of questioning and tried to lead me in the direction of Mr. Giamatti, the chauffeur.

"I knew that without evidence I couldn't focus the investigation on you. I had to go the long way round and see if it led back to you."

"But it doesn't, does it Mr. Wills?" Longley crowed. "You haven't a shred of evidence tying me to the video. You have no idea how the video came into Mr. Carstairs' hands, do you? This is all guesswork on your part. I suppose you hope you can unnerve me into making a confession."

"Yes, you're right. This is all guesswork. I have some more guesses. Would you like to hear them?"

"Not particularly, but I suppose that you intend to ramble on and keep me a virtual prisoner in my own office until I hear you out. Go on, then."

"I don't know how you obtained the video. You might have heard about it on the Internet from one of those cultists, Ringers they call themselves, that spread the video deliberately among their friends. Or you might have found the right contacts in the underground video market. In any case you learned of its contents and knew that it would suit Mr. Carstairs' tastes. You heard about the bizarre story attached to the video, that it was cursed. It struck you that, if true, this was a gift from Heaven, or maybe, more accurately, a temptation from the Devil that you couldn't resist. You could hand over the video to Mr. Carstairs and have it kill him in a week. If you wanted him to live it was easy enough to tell him the secret and arrange passing on the video to some poor victim. I don't suppose you would have lost much sleep over it. No, you intended that Mr. Carstairs die. It was perfect. Even if your involvement was discovered no one would ever accept a charge of murder by videotape.

"I asked myself, what could your motive be for killing Mr. Carstairs. Out of curiosity I went to the trouble of checking out some of your financial dealings, both in your own name and through various numbered companies that you've created to keep your name hidden. Now, I won't bother to mention the shopping spree you've been on. The cars, the house by the lake, the expensive jewelry, all those aren't impossible on the income of a prominent lawyer. But Mr. Longley, over the last five years you've been one of the most active real estate investors in the state. You're a major apartment landlord. You own industrial parks, office buildings. I think that in the last five years you've gone from being Mr. Carstairs' trusted legal advisor to being a leech sucking the blood out of his business empire. Now, as you say, this is merely a guess on my part. But it's a guess that can be confirmed with the suitable forensic audits. Mr. Longley, I've already reported my suspicions to Mrs. Carstairs. I passed along all my notes. I think she's willing to entertain my concerns. I expect she's already contacted an independent firm of accountants."

"You surprise me, Mr. Wills. I never thought you would get so far. Mrs. Carstairs, poor sweet soul, wanted to launch a search for the girl. I hired the investigator I thought would have the least chance of following the trail. You're well known as an inebriate, Mr. Wills, a stumbling drunk. No doubt when you're sober you can put two and two together, but I've heard that you are seldom sober these days.

"I knew from the start that there would be no point trying to bribe you, although I could easily offer you far more than you make in a year. You would be loyal to the old lady. You think of yourself as the white knight riding in to save the day.

"So what was the motivation that drove you all the way to this point? It can't be that you're outraged at Mr. Carstairs' murder. You think he's an old pervert, corrupted by money and power. Besides, he had a bad heart. All I did was hasten his demise. It can't be the money. That would be divided up among his greedy relatives, and a fair chunk is coming to me in any case. You probably wouldn't have a higher opinion of those relatives than I have. No, it comes back to the video, doesn't it? You couldn't stand the thought that some anonymous girl is victimized and the perpetrators go unpunished while others spread the video for their own gain or pleasure."

Longley smiled wryly. "I disgust you, don't I, Mr. Wills?" Under that calm exterior you're seething with the desire to punish me. Maybe you'd like to drive me out to some lonely country road, put a bullet through my head and dump me in a ditch."

"Funny, I thought that's what you'd like to do to me."

"Or maybe you'd feel better if you just pounded me unconscious with your fists. What a shame you won't get the chance. You have no outlet for your anger." Tom was convinced that these were, indeed, his unconscious thoughts. He was surprised how easily they could be guessed. But now that he had arrived at the end of the trail he no longer felt any anger that needed to be released in action. There was only a sense of emotional disappointment.

"You might like to make me the villain of the piece, Mr. Wills, but I am no more guilty than anyone else involved. I know about the people who call themselves Ringers. I like that image of the ring. It's so appropriate. Every point on a circle is indistinguishable from any other point, the same distance from the center. It may hurt my ego but I can accept that. This is much bigger than you or I. Think of ripples on the surface of a pond, Mr. Wills, ever expanding outward. You can't stop this. No one can. It's everywhere."

That night Tom appeared on Rachel's doorstep again. She let him in, hardly saying a word. He could see that she was worried about him.

"It's too late for dinner. You should have called. I could have made something for you and saved it."

Tom shook his head slightly. He told her about his investigation and what had transpired with Longley.

"I would offer you a drink but I don't have any alcohol in the house."

"I have plenty," replied Tom, not able to suppress an impish grin.

That was the alcoholic's syllogism. If there was liquor in the house he couldn't stop himself from drinking it. Unless there was liquor in the house he felt anxious, he couldn't face the day. Therefore there was always liquor in the house and therefore he drank.

While he was pouring a glass, Rachel asked, "Do you want me to drink with you?"

"It doesn't matter. I mean, it won't change my drinking a bit. Don't worry about it." He didn't want to seem curt. He thought he should explain further. "Amy used to drink with me, a long time ago. Maybe she thought it would moderate me. Maybe she thought it was her duty to keep me company. I don't know. But she would fall asleep and I would continue on regardless. She knew it wasn't healthy for her. She wanted one of us to be sober."

Rachel declared, with great seriousness, "I feel like drinking. I think I deserve it." It was difficult to always be thinking of being a model for your child.

There was a knock at the door. Tom went to get it. The thought crossed his mind that it might have something to do with him, not that he could come up with any plausible scenario. He looked through the peephole. It was a teenage boy.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to see Rachel Keller."

"What is this about?"

"I'm looking for a copy of a videotape. She knows what I mean. I heard she's the one to go to." To Tom he seemed a little scared. He was talking louder and faster than he needed to.

"Go away, son. We've got nothing for you." The boy stared and stood rigid. Then his courage seemed to crumble and he hurried back to his car on the curb.

Rachel was watching Tom carefully. "You're not going to pass on the video, are you? You've decided to see out your seven days."

"Yes." He looked at her expectantly, wondering what her reaction would be. She turned away and grimaced. She sat on the sofa, cocooned in her thoughts. After a moment she picked up the glass and started drinking. Tom knew better than some alcoholics who wanted to idolize any woman who would accept them as an angel of mercy. He knew that there were limits to her acceptance and understanding.

"Are you angry?"

"No. All right, a little. It's a terrible waste. Don't bother arguing with me. I know it's the right thing to do."

"I'm not being heroic. It just has to end here. I mean, my tiny piece of it ends here. As Longley says, it's much bigger than me."

Rachel didn't try to dissuade Tom from his decision. She drank silently. "I was thinking that I lost Noah and now I'm going to lose you, but it doesn't feel the same. I blame myself for dragging Noah into this. He's a filmmaker—was a filmmaker. I recruited him because I needed his expertise with the video. He didn't believe in any of it at first. You know what you're getting into. As much as that's possible, I mean."

Tom could guess that she had grieved over Noah's death and it was a grief she could not share with those around her. But now it seemed to have exhausted its power to draw tears from her. Tom sat beside her on the sofa. He looked at her intently. He placed a hand on her shoulder and caressed the round softness of her flesh. She exhaled slowly. She looked down at Tom's hand on her shoulder. She placed her other hand lightly on top of Tom's. He reached around her waist and pulled her body against his.


	7. Chapter 7

Rachel woke in the pre-dawn light shivering slightly. She pulled the duvet around herself. The satiny cover was cool against her naked skin. She knew Tom was not there and her heart went to her throat. For an instant she thought something terrible had taken him from her. Then her thinking clarified and she realized that he had two days before the seven days were up. The bed next to her still had some residual warmth. She got up, put on a dressing gown, and went to look for Tom still with some trepidation. This, she told herself, was silly. He had probably gone to the bathroom or to get a glass of water. But in the dim corridors of the house, transformed by the unfamiliar pale light, she still feared what she might find.

There was the sound of a television turning on. Rachel was so startled she nearly stumbled on the stairs. She could hear an eerie hum. Her heart was racing although she told herself that this was perfectly normal; the television must be tuned to a channel that wasn't broadcasting at this time in the morning. She cautiously stepped into the living room. The multi-colored glow from the test pattern on the screen fell gaudily across the room. She found Tom on the couch, shivering violently.

He looked up at her. "Just bad dreams." She said she would get a blanket.

"I can see water," he said in a voice that seemed to float in from a distance, "pools of water. I can hear it too. It's not only flowing over the floors, it's climbing up the walls." His body was white and rigid. She flung a blanket over him and he pulled it close. He was shivering. She flung her arms around him and held him tightly.

"Please don't ask me to change my mind. You could do it. Easily."

She smiled and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his back. She understood that, living his long downward spiral, he needed this achievement. To deny it to him would be terribly cruel.

He turned and kissed her. He had stopped shivering. "It comes and goes," he said, as if answering her unspoken question. "I think I can go back to sleep now."

In the morning when they were sitting at the kitchen table, Tom said that they should leave town for the weekend. He wanted to spare Rachel agonizing over what to do over his last days.

Rachel jumped at the suggestion. "I can leave Aidan with Yvonne. She's a reporter with the paper."

"He won't mind?"

"He probably thinks I'm overprotective. He'll be happy to get a break from me." She added, "I probably need a break from him, too."

Rachel drove south down the coast. There were long sandy beaches with crashing white surf. Tom found a place he liked. It was a small, older motel a few blocks from the beach. He preferred it to one of the modern luxury resorts. The motel looked empty. That was not surprising in the off-season. A couple in their fifties was behind the front desk when Tom entered. The woman scrutinized him sharply. For a moment Tom felt the self-consciousness of those used to being singled out and stared at. He wasn't sure if he could hold his hand steady enough to fill out the motel registration form.

"It's a lovely sunny day," he said, in a hearty voice. He looked out the window hoping to distract them. He scribbled out the form entries as quickly as he could.

"It's cold and it's windy," the man said gloomily.

"Still, it's a good weekend to spend on the coast."

"Nobody sensible comes to the beach with winter approaching."

"Yes, well, have a nice day, you two."

Tom pulled two bottles of liquor from the suitcase. He looked at Rachel, waiting for her to say something.

She said, "If you're worried I'm going to ask you to stop drinking, I'm not."

Tom looked away. "You won't have to put up with it for long." Rachel looked wistful but said nothing. He continued. "Not like Amy. She put up with me for years. Years of torment, it's fair to say. It was bad and sometimes it would get better for a while. She was a very patient woman. She always thought I would hit rock bottom and I would decide I had to change. I never did, though. I kept bobbing back to the surface without ever hitting bottom. I thought I could start all over again. I guess one day she found she couldn't."

Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "I wish I had some of that patience. I didn't have much tolerance for Noah's faults when we were living together. We were so different temperamentally. He would leap from one project to another. He would be wildly enthusiastic about one thing, then get frustrated and give up. Everything he tried seemed to get shot down in flames. I guess I wasn't the most supportive partner he could have hoped for."

"You realize that I'm not usually as good as this. I usually feel sicker and I'm not very good in company."

"Yes, I'd figured. You know I'll stay with you no matter what you decide or however things turn out."

Tom did not think he was being heroic about it but it never occurred to him to accept his fate with anything but stoicism. He had once made the mistake of acting pitiable around Amy. This did not work on her. She accepted with resignation his sicknesses, his accidents, the times he went missing, but she only had contempt for his effort to elicit pity. He understood instantly that it was the wrong step and he was mortified at his weakness.

They walked on the lonely beach wearing jackets and sweaters. They held hands. Tom resisted at first, thinking it made them look like teenagers, but he enjoyed the cool touch of Rachel's hands.

Tom looked at the sunlight sparkling on the water and thought that only here on this beach would the light look precisely like this. Anywhere else and the angle of the sun in the sky would be different, the water would be different. For this day he would bask in the glow of his uniquely privileged state.

Rachel knew that neither of them was much of a talker. Their relationship was mainly a physical one. That was fine with her. She knew they could always talk when they needed to. She did not feel that hunger some women had to absorb the entire biography of a man. She did not need to know the name of the dog he was given when he was eight or whether he was on the debating team in high school. She knew there wasn't much time.

At night Rachel awoke to find Tom slumped on the couch in the dark.

"What's wrong?"

"I couldn't sleep. It's normal for me," he said in a hoarse whisper. "I'm sorry you woke."

Tom muttered something indistinct.

"What?"

"I said, 'Do you think this place rents videos?'"

Rachel emitted a laugh that was almost a gasp. "How can you joke at a time like this?" She shoved him playfully.


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note: I want to thank everyone who has read so far. No one has raised any objections so far so I'll take that as a good sign._

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* * *

  
_

Tom slid down into the armchair in the lobby of the motel. His face was deathly pale and he looked like a person suffering from a fever. In an adjoining space there was a spread of cold breakfast items for the guests on a sideboard. At one of the dining tables a family with two young children, a boy and a girl, was eating. They were among the few guests Rachel and Tom had seen at the motel.

"Do you want anything to eat?" Rachel asked. Tom shook his head emphatically. Rachel went to get coffee and toast for herself.

There was a large television set in the lobby, an old picture tube model, that seemed to be on at all hours, tuned to some news network. Tom stared at it without watching. Just then the picture disappeared and there was only static. The noise of the static seemed to be increasing. Tom stood up, staring at the random gray and white dots on the screen. He was drifting towards the television as if something was drawing him towards it. Then Tom saw thick, muscular gray arms extruding from the screen and grabbing hold of his hair, his shoulders and his head. They were trying to pull him into the screen. Tom screamed. He was struggling against the pull of the arms, trying to fend them off. He was vaguely aware that the girl in the room was screaming in an higher pitched echo.

Tom found himself lying on his back on the carpet in front of the television. He looked up to see Rachel's face hovering above him. He looked around to see that the couple had gathered their children and were leaving. The little girl was still crying, her red face glossy with tears. The man was muttering to his wife and both were casting stares of outrage and condemnation in his direction. He could hear the drone of political commentary coming from the television set and didn't have to look to realize it had returned to normal. In a whisper he managed to tell Rachel what had happened. "You didn't see anything unusual did you? About the TV, I mean." Rachel shook her head, as he expected.

They returned to their room. Rachel couldn't avoid looking over at the manager at the front desk. The woman didn't say a word but her look was enough. Tom had confirmed her lowest suspicions of him. Rachel figured that was another lesson of living with Tom, getting used to being viewed as some kind of drug addict or alcoholic lowlife.

Rachel said, "I think it's time we left."

"I was planning to stay here in this room until it's over."

"The managers would have a nasty shock."

"You're right. I suppose that wouldn't be a good idea. It wouldn't be fair. I don't want to leave a mess for other people to clean up. I suppose we'll have to go back to your house." Rachel nodded. "When I tell you it's time for you to go, you have to go."

"Yes, all right."

Rachel knew the usual consequences for witnesses of a death from the video. Her heart fell as she remembered visiting Katie's friend in hospital.

"Who knows," Tom remarked as they were packing, "we could be wrong. The video may not be fatal any more."

Rachel grimaced. "How could this killing carry on, over and over?" she asked bitterly. "I could never understand what Samara wanted. I held her in my arms once. She was a flesh and blood child, or at least it seemed that way to me. I felt so sorry for what had happened to her. But now she's like this mindless evil force living in all the copies of the video."

Tom was silent for a while. Then he said, "I was thinking about what Longley said. This is bigger than us. Maybe it's bigger than Samara too. I mean, maybe she started something but now it's out of her control, too."

They drove north again, hardly saying a word. Dark clouds built up against the mountains to the east.

* * *

On the flight to the funeral Aidan wore a white shirt and gray dress pants. He had chosen these without Rachel telling him to. If he had asked she would have said it was all right to wear anything on the flight. She was often struck by his precociousness and his seriousness. She wondered how much of this was innate and how much had been shaped by his experiences.

"Honey, do you ever feel the presence of Samara? Do you hear her voice?"

"No, I don't. I haven't for a long time."

She thought about what Tom had said, about the ripples in the lake. The circles get ever wider but they've passed over us and beyond us and we're still here. "Then it's over. Samara won't trouble us any more." Then she added, "I've decided we're going to move back to Seattle. I'll try to get my old job back, or something like it. Won't that be great?"

Rachel remembered walking with Tom on the boardwalk by the ocean. They passed a tall man carrying a little girl on his shoulders. The girl was giddy with the view so high up. Rachel was turning to Tom with a smile when she noticed that his eyes were moistened. She turned away with a pang of distress.

Rachel leaned over to Aidan and, much to his surprise, gave him a fierce hug.


End file.
